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Here’s the week in a nutshell:

Monday: home with Zoe on our days off from school. Nursing my back since I fell on the ice in the driveway on Saturday, but not thinking it’s anything dramatic.

Tuesday: get a CAT scan. Have lunch with my brother while I have chemo. Sit in a chair for much of the day while getting treatments of one type or other.

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning: 1 a.m. Oh my word, my back hurts so much I can’t move. Perhaps I can just lightly fall out of bed so as not to wake Mark while I crawl through the house in search of painkillers. No light falling? OK, then I will slide slowly. No, not that either. OK, great force of will then sideways down the steps takes ten minutes to find no painkillers in the kitchen either. Lie on living room floor for a while wondering what to do. Inch back to bed, unsure why since pain is… OK, you get the picture.

Wednesday: 9 a.m. Mark brings me to ER. No broken bones. Lots of painkillers until I am myself again. Do get the lovely experience of trying to transfer from gurney to gurney for x-ray while in excruciating pain and trying to remain pleasant. Morphine and another IV and some Vicodin and I’m happy.

Thursday: All day in bed on painkillers nursing back waiting for oncology visit. 3:30 oncology visit learn that: lung mets are stable (good news), but spot on liver that was noticed in July has gotten bigger (not good news). So, I’ll need a CAT scan in 5 weeks to see what’s up with the liver. If there is a spot there, we may be able to radio-ablate (“zap”) it rather easily. Rather. Make the round of phone calls that needs to be made after such a visit and wish I could talk to my mom and dad who are en route home from Vietnam.

Friday: Get Zoe off to school and wonder if I should just stay in my Vicodin haze or actually try to make a go of the day. Opt for bed and my friend the heating pad on my back. Phone rings a lot. Friend, Sara, says on my answering machine, “OK, I’m coming over.” This means I will need to get out of bed. So we sit in my living room. We cry. We drink lattes. We cry. We laugh. We talk about plastic surgery and celebrities. We calculate how many hours it will be until my parents are home. And slowly I come back to myself and am no longer feeling like I’d like to seep into the cracks of the floor boards and disappear. This is a small but crucial victory.

Now: I’m taking plenty of pain meds, but laying off the Vicodin during the day. I’m feeling OK about the liver thing and just want the test over with to know what happens next. I’m reminding myself of the decision I made almost 4 years ago, “Well, Tash, you’re not going to die of cancer today, so what should you do instead?”

Today that meant hanging out with some of my favorite people.

I hope it always means that.

And I hope I don’t have another week like this one for a long, long time.

Last month Mark brought home the Verve Pipe family album courtesy of his friend, Connors, who currently plays bass for the band.

We have not stopped listening to it. All three of us love it. I was not cool enough to catch the Verve Pipe wave the first time around, but I’m telling you this family album is right catchy.

Zoe and I were both home today and I think she played the album a total of 20 times. My favorite song, “Worrisome One”, seems appropriately stuck in my head since this is worry week for me. A CAT scan tomorrow and a doctor appointment on Thursday.

The lyrics, “These are worrisome times and you worry sometimes.” Brilliant. I think it just may sing me right to the end of the week.

My friend Jane and I have been “kind of related” since the beginning of our friendship. Our friend, Paul, insisted we had been raised by the same woman when our college friends would tease us about how often our mothers would call us and what similar messages they’d leave, “Ya Tash, Mum.” “Hi Janie, Mom.” With their short brown hair, boundless energy, petite stature, thrifty nature and Dutch-Bingo proclivity, Mom and Sharon are a whole lot alike.

We shared an apartment our senior year of college. That’s the year Jane taught me how to cook. She was into extra virgin olive oil far before Rachel Ray and introduced me to the luxury/necessity that is minced garlic. Even now, most things I cook start with olive oil, onions, and garlic. The smell always brings me back to our tiny yellow kitchen with the big map. It’s one of the happiest smells of my life.

Then, in the nineties, our brothers (who were also close friends) married sisters. Now, in my Dutch-y town that’s not too crazy. In Madison, Wisconsin, where Jane now lives, this is a little nuts. She likes to talk about me not just as her best friend but as “my brother’s wife’s sister’s husband’s sister.” Oh, the wicked glee.

With a lake separating us, Jane and I don’t see each other as often as we’d like, but have started a new tradition. She comes here for the Race for the Cure, we go there for Memorial Day. Last Memorial Day, as I roamed around her house noting everything that had changed since the last time we were there, I noticed something wonderful. The plaque that I have hanging in my kitchen in green, she has in her kitchen in blue. The same one. Exactly…

OK, maybe that doesn’t seem so crazy, but here’s the kicker…
we each found them our respective favorite thrift stores.
Maybe we were raised by the same woman after all.

Being Zoe’s mom has always brought me great delight. The little things she does that crack me up have shifted and changed as she and I have aged, but each new stage has had its sweetness.

Every now and then, Mark and I notice our own traits coming out in Zoe. She and Mark can listen to and decode music in a way that is completely foreign to me. Zoe’s “alone time” is so valuable to her she eschews play-dates for it (huh?). Mark completely understands.

This weekend it was my turn to find a bit of myself in Zoe. A defining characteristic. A true stamp of my maternity (as if our running gait were not enough).

I am a maker of lists. I make them with glee. I put little boxes beside each task and put an “x” in the box to mark my accomplishment. This gives me a sense of superiority over the day. I’ll even add things to my lists that I have already done, just so I get “credit” for them (I never said my list-making was healthy!).

On Sunday, Mark and I were cleaning up paper in the dining room that had accumulated over Zoe’s day of being sequestered with a cough. She had been a bit bored, but had eventually found outlets for her energy. Going through the mess, Mark found this…

I was so delighted with this daughter of mine that I hung her list on the fridge. Zoe, sensing my enthusiasm, quickly removed it from the fridge and threw it in the kitchen trash.

Pish. Silly girl. She should know me well enough to know that not only am I a maker of lists, I am also a shameless picker of trash.

Seven and a half years ago, I was anticipating staying home with a baby full time and I was nervous. Our neighborhood was a bit sketchy–we saw our share of suspected drug deals and the language that was shouted by pedestrians was often ugly. When Zoe was born and my mama-bear instincts kicked in, I talked of moving. The phone was my only connection to my dearest friends (including my sister) and I was isolated at home with a baby I was just learning how to parent.

Moving wasn’t really an option and I’m not sure what it would have solved anyway, so I started to pray for a friend. OK, I begged a little.

And when Zoe was about three months old, a tall blonde woman knocked at my door with a white-haired, blued-eyed baby strapped to her chest. This was Emily. She lived only two doors down. She was a Christian. And an educator. And her husband worked in computers. And her daughter was six weeks younger than mine. And, and, and.

Let me just say that I’ve prayed many prayers and begged often, but seldom have requests been granted so big. It was like I asked for a candy bar and God gave me Willy Wonka’s whole factory.

In those first years with our babies home, Emily was the first person I called in the morning with, “what are we doing today?” and the last person I called before Mark got home–so that she and I could both grouse that our husbands had left their Holland jobs (blocks from one another) far too late and we wondered if we could hold on to a squalling baby one moment longer.

The years that have followed have brought more than either of us could imagine. I knew the first time (of many) that Emily rescued me when I was chemo-sick that God had answered my friend request so big for a reason. But when Emily and I hoof it out to Breton and back on our walks or when we watch our daughters exchange messages in a short-hand only time and love can arrange, I also know that God brought us and our families together for more than just the trying times. We have stored up far more laughter than tears.

Tonight we celebrated Emily’s birthday. Our husbands talked computers and movies. Our daughters played with reckless abandon and complained expertly when the evening was over. Like puppies, they will greet one another with great enthusiasm when they are reunited at school in the morning and despair when they are parted. We had a big meal, ate cake, opened presents, and marveled at the enchanted scene with which the girls had set the table.

After it was all over and the dishwasher was humming, Emily and I went out for a walk. It was lovely.

Here’s to you, Emily. Here’s to many more walks. Many more birthdays. And much more laughter. And here’s to a prayer extravagantly answered.

Mark and I met with Dr. Campbell today to go over my CAT scan of almost 2 weeks ago. After waiting 2 hours to see him and then going through all kinds of statistics and measurements the upshot is: stay the course. CAT scans measure in 1/4 inch intervals and the nodules we measure are in millimeters, so room for error, speculation, and interpretation abounds. We agree heartily with Dr. Campbell’s assessment that the nodules in my lungs are essentially stable. I won’t try to chart and graph all the measurements we went through with Dr. Campbell. He and Mark share a great affection for white boards.

I did get my way with having a week off from treatment this week to, quite literally, catch my breath–though Dr. Campbell quipped that he thinks I must negotiate prices for used cars on the weekends.

The last week and a half has been a nutty one. After treatment on September 24, I did my usual preps for the usual side effects, and a few strange things happened. I’ve been short of breath (especially at night), and I’ve had a two-day stint of highly motivated nausea. Add in some exceptional bloating and a few nosebleeds and there was my confusing and depressing health status.

My oncologist, concerned mainly for my heart, has checked it thoroughly with a CAT and an echo-cardiogram. My ticker seems fine. I’ve had water pills for the bloating, and switched back to my old allergy med hoping that the switch was the reason for the shortness of breath. I’ve also been assured that the cancer is not to blame for the shortness of breath.

Today, I’m not nauseated, my breathing is decent (still catch on the deep breaths), I’m back to normal size (no bloating), and my spirits are OK despite the persistent rain. We’ll meet with Dr. Campbell on Monday afternoon to see the CAT results in terms of chemo efficacy and then I’ll badger him until he agrees to put off chemo for another week so that I can have a week of kind of normal.

I write all this, not just to tell you all every little detail of my health, but because I’m exhausted by it. Sick of being sick. Sick of making people worry. Sick of leaving work for another test. Sick of waking up and immediately assessing every little nuance of how I’m feeling.

But I’m also writing this in wonder, because no one else seems to be sick of it. My parents still swoop in at a moment’s notice with cold washcloths for my head and a meal for my family. My mom stays in my house while I convalesce and does my family’s laundry. Sara and Emily coax me out for tea and toast after two rough days. Colleagues call to check in, drop off apples, and pick up my ever slackening slack. Chris and Alison call and drop off food. Jane drives from Madison for the Race for the Cure for the fifth time in a row. Heather and Jane stay overnight before the race and fill my house with laughter. Mark sends me to bed early. Assures me that Zoe will be fine. Cleans up the kitchen. Gets Zoe off to school and heads to work himself. Again.

Then yesterday, here comes my sister-in-law Beth with a box of freezer meals. Vegan. She and Mark’s mom had been cooking all day for us. I now am the proud owner of a freezer full of love. Wow.

I write this because I am stumped at how all of these lovely people–and more I’ve neglected to mention–are not sick of this. That they haven’t just fallen away because this is just the old Turner family saw–Tash in bed, not sure why. That they continue to contribute to the Komen Foundation at my request. That they offer meals and mean it. That they call, and care, and pray.

It’s been YEARS, people! How do you do it?!

I am amazed. Grateful. Overwhelmed. Humbled.

Thank you.

What a weekend! The Race for the Cure on Saturday morning (post forthcoming), an evening date with Mark, and fun downtown at Artprize today. Here are a few select shots I took before the camera battery went out–probably all for the best since then I could experience the fun of Artprize rather than try to take photos. The photos are from Rob Bliss’ entry in the competition which involved oodles of colored paper airplanes released from downtown buildings while musicians played (how’s that for a comprehensive artist’s statement?).

Happy Birthday, Mom!

In the Big Brick House there was a family
And a basement where no one could watch TV.

Ivy that grew from Mom’s wedding bouquet.
And a lively front yard
where they played croquet.

A garden where two well-loved dogs are buried.
And a cool laundry chute
–way more fun than to carry.

A Little House Under the Steps
And a sisters’ room
where secrets were kept.

A handy entrance when they lost their keys
And a perfect hiding spot when playing Sardines

A mailbox that announced with a jarring squeak
And a sun deck for a water fight sneak

There were three happy kids
And two parents who loved them.

A warm fireplace below
And a tight roof above them.

Good night 2222

Good night brick house with a family
Good night basement, no watching TV

Good night croquet, Good night bouquet.
Good night chute, buried dogs, Pepper’s step
Good night Little House Under The Steps

Good night mail box, good night hiding spot
Good night handy entrance that no one forgot.

Good night happy house,
may you always be loved.
Warm fireplace below
tight roof above.